If there's one kind of pre-20th century book that I do go for, this year seems to have highlighted that I do enjoy a good adventure yarn. Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, throw in a dash of Holmes, a pinch of mystery and suspense, and garnish with some swashbuckling and I'm likely to be sold.
J. Meade Falkner's Moonfleet was therefore pretty much ideal when I stumbled across it. A tale of smuggling and the sea, treasure and treachery, it certainly ticked all of the requisite boxes. And I seemed to rattle through it at a fair enough pace, which is no bad thing as the year is drawing to an end and I've not had so much time to devote to the pleasures of the printed word.
Anyway, it largely did what it said on the tin. I liked the Dorset setting, especially as I'm now passingly familiar with some of the places and the ongoing theme of the 'Y' and the making of decisions and their implications was a neat touch. I was slightly suprised at the scale of the adversity faced by our hero and his mentor, which went beyond what I would suppose to be the norm, and I wasn't actually expecting the ending that came. I thought it was more like to be a moral tale than one of material gain, but following matrimony, it ended up being both. And because it was a little unexpected, I suppose I liked it all the more.
Book number: 93
Title: Moonfleet
Author: J. Meade Falkner
Category: Pre-20th century fiction
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